Color management is extremely important to many retail industries where sales are often related to the ability of a retailer to offer products in colors that are currently popular. Taking the textile/apparel industry as an example, the popularity of certain colors waxes and wanes seasonally, requiring the retailer to be ever vigilant regarding the color of the products offered for sale. Manufacturers, distributors, designers and retailers (simply termed retailer hereinafter), are continually seeking methods and apparatus to ensure consistency of color in the products that they offer for sale. This starts with the colorants, including pigments and dyes, that are used to color, e.g. dye, the material used in their products. Many retailers are faced with the further task of ensuring color-coordination of products on different materials, such as different fabrics, ceramics, plastics, etc. Compounding the difficulties of such a task, materials from different vendors have a tendency to behave differently as viewing conditions change, such as, natural daylight versus artificial lighting, or viewing angle. Given that a fairly typical retailer in, for example, the textile/apparel industry, may purchase the same textile/apparel products from ten different vendors in six different countries on three different continents, the time and resources spent on color management becomes significant.
Continuing with our example the textile industry, when purchasing textile products for resale, a retailer creates a specification that may include: a pattern; a fabric; a color name; and reflectance data associated with the desired color and fabric. The specification is provided to multiple vendors. These vendors in turn may sub-contract out some of the materials and or dying process. For example, a dye house may be asked to match the color of the fabric requested by the retailer and dye the fabric for subsequent assembly of the textile product. To do this, the dye house may use internal resources or consult external resources, such as a colorant manufacturer. Often, the match is not perfect, but instead is an approximation with colorants available to the professional performing the match. Recognizing this, most retailers require that a sample produced using the color match be sent to the retailer for approval of the color match. A color-matching professional associated with the retailer will review the sample and report the results back to the vendor. Experience has shown that for every sample approved, six are rejected.
A modern color office has a couple of automated tools at its disposal to assist with the reviewing process. Upon reception of the color sample, a spectrophotometer can be used to obtain reflectance data that can be compared, either manually or automatically, to reflectance data for an approved sample. A light box that simulates several different light sources can aid in determining if the sample has unacceptable metamerism. A word processor can be used to generate an acceptance or rejection letter. More verbose rejection letters include comments from the reviewer that attempt to provide guidance for future submissions, perhaps even including a suggested color recipe. Finally, the letter can be sent using e-mail or a facsimile machine.
Color selection is a time consuming process that has heretofore required a highly experienced color matching professional to ensure consistency across several product lines. A color matching professional may be called on to review a hundred or more submissions per day. In the past, this has required hours of effort analyzing each submission, identifying deficiencies and preparing detailed reports in an effort to avoid further failed attempts. With a trend toward color coordination in almost every consumer product, the amount of time and resources being devoted to selecting colors is becoming significant and is outpacing the availability of color matching professionals.
For example, consider the automotive industry. It is not uncommon for an automaker to coordinate matching colors in the interior of an automobile. This requires matching color across a variety of materials, including: plastic, leather, metal, and fabric. Given that each type of material requires separate approvals (each with a 6-to-1 rejection ratio), such matching has, in the past, required an extraordinary amount of effort from color-matching professionals.
Another example is the athletic shoe industry. The current style in sneakers includes a mix of a variety of different materials, each of which must be dyed so as to match the other materials. It is possible that any given sneaker will contain several, if not all, of the following materials: cotton, polyester, nylon, leather, rubber, metal and plastic. Each material needs to be individually color matched. Further, it is not uncommon for other types of products, such as clothing; bags; and watches, to be promotionally tied with a sneaker line, presenting additional materials that require dyeing to a predetermined color.
Co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/883,647, entitled: A PROCESS FOR COLOR MANAGEMENT, incorporated herein by reference, describes the use of an engineered color standard (ECS) by a retailer for controlling a color quality across multiple suppliers. Co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/109,122, entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COLOR MANAGEMENT, incorporated herein by reference, describes apparatus and methods for generating color recipes. However, the apparatus and methods described in these applications do not provide tools that directly assist the color matching professional with reviewing the hundreds of submissions on a daily basis. The present invention provides improved methods and apparatus that automate much of the color sample review process.